According to worldwide research published today, the outlook for the UK jobs market is at its weakest for almost a decade, with employers putting new recruitment on hold as business confidence decreases.

A survey of over 55,000 employers by Manpower, one of the world’s largest recruitment companies, reports that, in the final quarter, employment in the UK is the weakest since the beginning of 1999.

The jobs market, however is struggling all over the world. Employers in three quarters of the countries surveyed reported that hiring intentions were weaker than three months ago while two-thirds said that they were worse than a year ago. Countries who are struggling to recruit the most are Spain, Ireland and Italy.

Hiring intentions in the US, where the unemployment rate rose last month to a five-year high of 6.1 percent, are also the weakest since 2003. The UK, however, has replaced the US as the economy considered to be at the greatest risk of a severe downturn, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Since the beginning of June the UK financial services and construction industries have seen over 10,000 redundancies, and further job losses are expected as the effects of declining consumer confidence spreads to other sectors notably, retail and the service industry.

Manpower warned that “more businesses will be reducing staff numbers than increasing employees in the run-up to Christmas” with more than 80 per cent of companies “taking a wait and see approach to their recruitment”.

Mark Cahill, managing director of Manpower UK, said: “Employers have faced difficult times since the credit crunch and wider economic and confidence worries really took effect last year. This uncertainty is being reflected by new recruitment plans being put on hold and with slightly more employers now looking to reduce their staff numbers than add to them.

“It is not clear how long the current business climate will last. In the current conditions it is not surprising that many business are not predicting any increase in hiring and are using temporary and contract workers to meet short term demands.”

The total number of people out of work rose by 60,000 to 1.67m during the three months to the end of June, and they are expected to rise.

Andy Brown, managing director of Organisational Consulting at YouGov, said: “Fears around job losses, stagnating wages and poor job opportunities have risen very sharply in the past few months. But in a positive response, many British workers seem prepared to ‘get on their bike’ to find work.”